


Déja Vu

by CreziasAlias



Series: Modern Nostalgia: A Borgia Siblings Tale [3]
Category: Borgia: Faith and Fear, Borgias - Ambiguous Fandom, The Borgias (Showtime TV)
Genre: F/M, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-19 10:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29998050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreziasAlias/pseuds/CreziasAlias
Summary: [Modern/AU] Cesare tries to begin a new chapter in his life by moving away from his family, but his father as well as his sister do everything they can to pull him back into the fold. Meanwhile Alfonso tries to do the noble thing, not realizing that the Borgia family is not known for their noble ways.
Relationships: Alfonso d'Aragona (1481–1500)/Lucrezia Borgia, Cesare Borgia & Lucrezia Borgia, Lucrezia Borgia & Sancia d'Aragon, Rodrigo - Relationship
Series: Modern Nostalgia: A Borgia Siblings Tale [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2133750





	1. The Little Lamb of God

The boy got a seat in the front of the Church. Not all the way in the choir, where the coffin was and the grey-haired men in the red dresses, but almost directly in front of the preacher. He’d rather sit in the back; he was kicking his legs in the air, but the lady from the office kept telling him not to do that. _Do you see others kicking their legs in the air like that?_ She said gently, and she gestured to the rest of the front row. _They are all sitting still, you see?_ If he’d sat in the back, he could have kicked his legs; no one would have noticed it then.

He couldn’t see inside the coffin from where he sat anyway, it was too far away and he was not tall enough. Sometime during the service he even started to wonder if there was anyone inside, because it seemed strange to him that they’d take your body after you died and put you in a church like that, with all these people. Dying was kind of like sleeping, they’d told him, so the coffin must kind of be like a bed – and yet he’d never seen this many people standing around in anyone’s bedroom. They would never fit in his, he knew that for sure.

The preacher was done with his speech. He gave a sad look at the coffin as if it wasn’t just a box of wood, and then the choir stepped forward. They produced a heavenly sound, like someone had peeled all the paintings of angels off the walls of the cathedral and told them to sing. They didn’t look much like angels, though; their white, shapeless dresses looked weird. He always got a dress like that when he was at the hairdresser’s, but they never told him to sing.

The lady told him to stop kicking his legs again, but this time she put her hand on his legs to make them stop. Her hand was cold and he shivered.

He didn’t know anyone in the cathedral, not even her. Her name was Meredith and she was a nun, but she wasn’t wearing nun’s clothes, just a silver cross around her neck. She said she came from an office, so he wasn’t sure if she really was a nun. She also said she would look after him for a little while, and she never stopped saying that it would all be alright. He didn’t trust her a whole lot. Maybe if she’d worn the same clothes nuns wore, he would.

There were some men in the front that he thought he’d seen before, but they all wore the same red dress and the same solemn expression, which made it hard to tell them apart. He didn’t even recognize the cathedral, while he had been there many times before; it was so full now that he couldn’t even see the wooden confessional that always stood on the far left.

He did recognize the tall man and the pretty lady with the blonde hair. The tall man sat in the front too, in the left corner where the confessional should have been; next to him there was one of those men in the red dresses, but the man was wearing a black suit. The pretty lady with the blond hair was on the other side, standing in between a younger man with light brown hair and an older one with black-and-white hair, who was holding a shiny silvery white cane. There was a veil draped over her beautiful blonde hair, but the boy still liked to look at her best.

The tall man liked to look at her, too, he noticed. The man would close his eyes sometimes, or direct them to the ceiling, but they would always land back on her. Even when the singing was over, and the talking was over, and everyone gathered around the wooden box to put the lid on and lift it on their shoulders, he was looking at her.

The boy liked to watch the tall man watch the pretty lady, because he’d rather not watch the wooden box. The men lifted it as if it were incredibly heavy, which made him angry. He thought they were probably pretending; they didn’t really _mean_ it, just like they didn’t really mean it when they made sad faces at the box.

The boy wanted to stay behind in the cathedral, kick his feet and then maybe go to the tall man. He would feel better when he was around the tall man. Sister Meredith wasn’t unkind, but she didn’t seem like she was a part of his life. He remembered the tall man in the empty cathedral, how he’d fought with the lady. The boy had been scared when he watched the tall man coming down the aisle towards him, but then he’d seen his wet eyes. God had made him cry, the tall man had told him, and the boy had believed him because he recognized pain.

He wanted to take the tall man’s hand or hide in the confessional that had to be around somewhere; they must have moved it. The lady told him he had to follow the procession with the coffin. He said he didn’t want to, but she made him walk anyway. When he looked over his shoulder, he couldn’t see the tall man anymore, and the lady with the veil was gone from her place, too, as if they had never been there.

The boy cried then, and Sister Meredith put a hand on his black curls to soothe him; but he was still alone.


	2. The Grave and the Beyond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the fresh grave of Cardinal Andrea Ruggiero stands Cesare Borgia with his father Rodrigo Borgia. Rodrigo tries to convince Cesare to come to his sister's wedding, but for once, Cesare is done obeying his father.

Cesare lingered at the grave after the coffin had sunk into the ground and the roses and the dirt had been flung down into the hole. No one tried to talk to him; they all walked in a large, disorganized bunch in the direction of the chapterhouse of the cathedral, where the funeral reception would take place and the alcohol would be served.

Cesare was soon the only one left at the grave. His sister and her fiancé had gone too, which was both a disappointment and a relief. Perhaps a tiny part of him had hoped she’d linger and tell him everything he didn’t know he wanted to hear. But that part was like a tiny water bubble floating around in a teenager’s wet dream, while Cesare was finally ready to grow up. He’d decided that that was what had to happen, because he’d been kept small, had small dreams and desired small things for too long.

Instead of thinking about what might then constitute _greatness,_ Cesare thought of how everyone close to him had their share of blame for all that smallness: she and father and even he himself had held him back. The best thing to do, logically, was to stay away from them, and definitely from Lucrezia’s big wedding.

It was a matter of revenge disguised as emancipation, or otherwise some mix of the two.

Whatever disappointment Cesare felt when it became clear that Lucrezia hadn’t lingered at the grave was replaced with irritation when his father joined his side.

Rodrigo was wearing a pale grey suit that contrasted sharply with Cesare’s black suit, and in fact with most other suits at the funeral. He liked to wear light colours, and he wasn’t the sort of man to let a grim event like a funeral impinge on his tastes. He also knew that he was important enough to get away with it, which might also have impacted his refusal to follow the dress code. Perhaps to make up for his un-funeral-like outfit, or to draw even more attention, Rodrigo carried a slender ivory cain with him, which Cesare noticed with quiet exasperation.

Rodrigo put the cain between his feet and wobbled it with both his hands closed around the silver nob. ‘I see _this_ invitation was not lost in the mail,’ he said to his son, referring to the funeral invitation. ‘We had almost lost faith in the American postal service.’ Rodrigo had wasted a forest of rich, creamy paper on wedding invitations, all bound for his son’s apartment. Cesare had sent the first few back, until he decided it was too much trouble and he just threw them out.

‘The American postal service works just fine, and so does my paper shredder,’ Cesare replied calmly.

‘You disappoint me, Cesare. You behave like a petulant child,’ Rodrigo remarked, which was an unintentional and ill-timed reference to Cesare’s perceived smallness.

Cesare said through clenched teeth: ‘I’m only doing what you taught me, dad. I would have disappointed you a lot more if I’d cracked under your pressure. Or do criminals confess after they’ve received twenty of your fancy envelopes?’

‘That would depend on the contents,’ Rodrigo answered. ‘But you are not a criminal, you are a disobedient son going out of his way to hurt his loved ones. Did I teach you to treat your family this poorly? Did I teach you that family is less important than vengeance?’

Cesare frowned at his father, because he didn’t himself think that he was exacting vengeance by refusing to go the wedding, even if he was. In his mind, he just really, _really_ did not want to go, and if Lucrezia was sad about that, then that was a measly bonus compared to the pain she was causing him by continuing with this farce.

Rodrigo caught his son’s scowl and said sharply: ‘I know vengeance when I see it, Cesare. Now, I know that I’ve treated you harshly the past months, but you know that I’ve always wanted the best for you. I still do, and I don’t think that this behaviour right now is what is best. Your crusade is pointless and hurtful. Really, Cesare, think of what you’re doing to Lucrezia!’

Cesare scoffed, which earned him an incredulous look from Rodrigo. Rodrigo took his cane from the ground and planted it in the ground again a few inches away from Cesare’s right foot. ‘I have never known you to be so dismissive of my words when it comes to your sister’s happiness,’ he said to his son – and in this he was more right than he could have imagined.

Cesare looked away to the ground where the cane was drilling a hole in the soggy earth. Rodrigo, sensing that he’d hit the right button, quickly went on: ‘You may have your issues with Alfonso and even with me, but it is her you’re punishing. You have no idea how sad she is. I don’t think I’ve seen her smile once in the past two weeks; not even the wedding excites her anymore. It’s really awful that you would do that to her, Cesare, and it’s not like you at all.’

‘Is she going to call off the wedding, then?’ Cesare asked. He tried not to sound hopeful, but he didn’t manage it completely.

‘Of course not,’ Rodrigo said indignantly. ‘But I doubt she’ll have the time of her life, on her own wedding day! That just breaks my heart, and if it doesn’t break yours you’re stone.’

Cesare stared at his father’s ivory cane and felt himself become just as hard and unbending. _Alright,_ he thought, _then I will be stone._ He much preferred it, actually.

When Cesare’s reaction didn’t come, Rodrigo took it for silent agreement. ‘We will talk together, you and I, but first we must think about your sister. She will be overjoyed when she hears,’ he said.

‘I’m not going, dad,’ Cesare replied coldly.

‘Cesare-’

‘A funeral is not the place to talk about a wedding.’

There was a rather long pause during which Rodrigo stared at his son’s profile and tried to discern what was behind that face. Cesare was staring at the grave and couldn’t be tempted to look up. Finally Rodrigo sighed, put his cane between his feet again and fixed his gaze on the grave too. ‘Why not?’ He said. ‘After the end of one life, another must begin. Two lives, in this case.’

‘Right. And had Cardinal Ruggiero lived, he would have received a wedding invitation, surely?’ Cesare asked sardonically. He wasn’t sure what had happened to Cardinal Ruggiero – a stroke, they said, which came at a convenient time since the man had been on trial for his involvement in one Operation Gladio thirty years back. But Cesare knew more about the Cardinal than that: for instance, that he was part of a neo-Nazi society called the _Werwolf-Gesellschaft,_ and that he’d tried and failed to blackmail the Borgia family into helping him win his trial. They had retaliated by threatening to expose the Cardinal’s connections to Gesellschaft, successfully; the Cardinal had been absolutely mortified when Cesare and Lucrezia told him what they knew. Cesare figured that if Ruggiero hadn’t suffered a stroke in that moment, it didn’t seem likely for him to have a stroke afterwards. Or at the very least it was anti-climactic.

But perhaps death was always a little anti-climactic, Cesare thought. The Cardinal had had a long, elaborate service with so many prelates in attendance that one might think the man had been a saint – which he hadn’t been – but still it hadn’t impressed Cesare in the slightest. In fact, the Cardinal’s death hadn’t really impressed him, and somehow he didn’t think that was because of him but because of the Cardinal. There was a possibility that the man had been killed, yes, but still his death, his funeral and even the _weather_ at his funeral was boring, boring, boring, death just a thing that Cardinal Andrea Ruggiero suffered passively.

‘We forgave Cardinal Ruggiero for his sins,’ Rodrigo said, and he couldn’t have said anything less impressive.

Cesare was tempted to laugh at this but thought it ill-mannered there at the grave. ‘Did you? What, when you gave him his last rites?’ He scoffed, then looked at the hole before him with the pile of sand next to it. ‘I always wondered what forgiveness looks like. I have to say, it’s not looking so good as most priests would have you believe, at least not from my vantage point.’

‘Forgiveness cleanses the soul,’ his father said wisely, and he tapped his cane on the ground, drawing a mushy sound from the earth. ‘It is _good,_ but it’s not supposed to be _comfortable_.’

‘Oh, I think I will take your word on that. Or Cardinal Ruggiero’s,’ Cesare said. He thought of the old man’s body in the coffin. It would probably be rigid and grey, his complexion the same colour as his father’s ivory cane and his skin as wrinkled as an old washcloth. _What a supreme indignity_.

‘We had no part in his death, Cesare,’ Rodrigo sighed. ‘But if I had to venture a guess, it was probably the Society.’

‘You leaked the information to the Society?’ Cesare asked, surprised though not exactly dismayed.

‘No, but I’m sure they have informants everywhere, at least if they’re any good at being an illegal, underground organization,’ Rodrigo said, just as Cesare thought that roughly the same was true for the CIA. He was willing to bet that the funeral was infested with CIA informants, too.

‘Or maybe the Cardinal just suffered a heart attack,’ Rodrigo added, and shrugged. ‘Either way, the trial is done.’

They were quiet for a long time. Cesare ultimately broke the silence, saying something he hadn’t known he’d say or even think: ‘So am I, I think.’

‘So are you, what?’ Rodrigo asked.

Cesare shook his head and rubbed his forehead. ‘Done. I’m going to quit my job, dad.’

Rodrigo assumed that this was related to the death of Cardinal Ruggiero. He knew that Cesare hadn’t liked the man, but Ruggiero had still been Cesare’s former employer. If Cesare believed the man had been killed, possibly by affiliated organizations such as the CIA, it was only logical that he would shy away from such a lethal and immoral environment.

Rodrigo focused all his attention on his son, even though Cesare continued looking at the grave. ‘Cesare, I swear that the CIA had nothing to do with this,’ he said gravely.

‘I don’t care,’ Cesare said, to Rodrigo’s surprise. ‘It’s not about Ruggiero.’

‘Then what?’ Rodrigo exclaimed. ‘If this is about your theory that all priests are evil… Cardinal Ruggiero had misguided principles, but Cardinal Catalano is very different, as you have seen yourself.’

Cesare turned to his father and glared at him. ‘It isn’t about that either. If there’s anyone who knows that the frock does not make the holy man, it’s me. Ruggiero was an asshole and Catalano is a good man, maybe even a good priest. But the problem is not _them_ , it’s me. I’m not a spiritual person – look at me!’ He gestured with his hands wildly, a dark devil flailing its limbs above a man’s fresh grave, but Rodrigo didn’t flinch.

‘I work in a church,’ Cesare said. ‘What am I doing there?’

Rodrigo squinted his eyes at his son and shook his head. ‘That’s all nonsense, Cesare. I raised you to be a good Catholic. Even if you don’t identify with it spiritually, you know that there are lots of people working for the Church who are not spiritual, or even Catholic.’

Cesare clenched his hands in frustration. The leather gloves he was wearing squeaked gracelessly. ‘Well why the fuck is that normal?’ He demanded.

‘Don’t swear, Cesare, this is a funeral,’ Rodrigo berated him, tapping his cane on the ground again. ‘It’s normal because the Church is not only a religious emblem but also a political institution that needs _politicians_. It’s just two sides of the same coin. The separation between those two sides may seem contradictory to you, but in fact it has always been there; and history teaches us that each time they are brought out of balance, it’s bad for the Church. The Church’s duality is the reason it still has the power it has today, Cesare, so there’s no need to feel like you’re out of place or doing a bad thing by working there. Besides, if everybody who experiences a spiritual crisis quits their jobs, no one would be working.’

Cesare listened to his father impatiently. When he was done, he said: ‘Then maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe I’m not bad for the Church, but the Church is bad for me.’

Rodrigo could hardly imagine such a thing, since the Church and the faith had always treated him exceedingly well. ‘How so? What do you lack?’ He asked. ‘You get paid, you have a privileged position, you and Rover get along… and there’s so much ahead of you still. This is only the beginning, believe me.’ As he said it, Rodrigo could picture what lay ahead, and Cesare could see it all in his father’s eyes as if he were watching a movie on a big screen – a movie he’d seen many, many times before.

‘You’re not listening,’ Cesare said. He considered walking away, because he didn’t think there was a point to their conversation: he already knew they would never agree. Not about the wedding, and certainly not about Cesare’s future. ‘You’re not a prophet,’ he told his father in the way only an exasperated and thankless child can say it. ‘I don’t need you to show me the red thread of my life.’

Rodrigo was taken aback by the sudden hostility of his son and struggled to find an answer that would deescalate their conversation. ‘I’m not,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m telling you why you shouldn’t quit.’

But Cesare wasn’t willing to back down. He had been too isolated from his family, too shunned even, to find warmth in it now – either in his father with his large dreams in his eyes and the promises that lay on his tongue, or in his sister, who had the entire world in his eyes but whose tongue said no, no, no, maybe.

If Cesare looked in a mirror, then what would stare back? He didn’t even know, and so he had no one and nothing to hold onto.

‘I can see the glory you see, dad, and I can recognize that you’re right and that my future will be glorious exactly the way you say it will be,’ Cesare said to his father. ‘But the problem is that I don’t like it. I don’t need you to hand me things on a silver platter, nor do I want to live within the borders you draw up for me.’

‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ Rodrigo said derisively, and he clacked his tongue. ‘I’m not trying to force you into anything, I’m just showing you what you could become if you put your mind to it.’

This annoyed Cesare further, because it wasn’t that he _couldn’t_ do it, it’s that he didn’t _want_ to do it – that was exactly what his father didn’t and refused to understand, though to be fair to Rodrigo, it’s only natural for a father to see a child’s potential and not desire. If Rodrigo had had eye for his son’s desires, he would never have asked Cesare to come to the wedding in the first place.

‘But how could I, when you’ve already done it for me?’ Cesare asked. ‘I mean really, dad, you’re still trying to force me to go to a wedding when I’ve already told you in the clearest way possible that I don’t want to go.’

‘That has nothing to do with this,’ Rodrigo said.

Cesare recognized that that was true, and that he didn’t want to get back on the topic of the wedding anyway. So he said: ‘Fine, alright, forget about the wedding. But _you know_ that if it were up to you, I would be next in line to be the Pope of Rome.’

Now Rodrigo scoffed. His son was no cardinal, though he could have been. He took up his cane and tapped it in the air between him and his son. ‘You severely overestimate my abilities, Cesare.’

Cesare ignored the cane and looked straight into his father’s brown eyes that were so much like his. ‘And you underestimate _mine._ I don’t want to be like you, and I don’t have to be.’

Rodrigo was offended and hurt; he really did want the best for his son, in fact, he wanted everything for Cesare that he hadn’t gotten himself. So his son’s blatant rejection rather felt like a rejection of himself, which was worse than showing no gratitude. ‘Okay,’ he said, striking a bitter tone. ‘Suit yourself, do whatever you want. Go see if you can get a job at MacDonald’s on your goddamn own. But I’m still the leader of this family, so if I tell you to suit up and stand around at a goddamn _party_ for a few hours, just for the happiness of your sister, you will do it. Capisce, smart boy?’

An hour later, Cesare had installed himself at the bar with a glass of whiskey, watching his father going around the room keeping his network alive and tapping his cane on the floor like the stereotype criminal he was. It was laughable, and Cesare wanted to laugh and lay his head down on the bar so badly it almost hurt. But then he would see a glimpse of Lucrezia on the other side of the room and his mind ran into a rut.

‘Do you serve those fruit platters they sell on the market?’ He asked the bartender at one point. He’d been wiping the counter and keeping a sharp eye on Cesare’s glass.

‘It’s not on our menu, but I’m pretty sure we could whip up a platter of fruit, sir,’ the bartender said.

‘With chocolate is what I mean. You have to melt it, eh, au Marie or something, the- the French way – and then you pour it over the fruit. You know what I mean, don’t you?’

‘Yes, sir, I think so,’ the bartender said, but he wasn’t rushing away to put the order in.

‘That something nice to serve at a wedding, you think?’ Cesare asked.

‘Sure, a little messy maybe,’ the bartender answered, and when Cesare didn’t say anything else, he added: ‘You know, stuff’s sticky. Sir.’

Cesare snickered and looked into his whiskey glass. He looked up to say something to the man and saw him politely nod his head to someone coming up behind Cesare. This person joined Cesare at the bar, much to Cesare’s dismay. ‘Yeah, it’s damn sticky. Wouldn’t go well with all those nice dresses,’ he told the bartender, and then, without turning his head to the side in a proper greeting: ‘Alfonso. I hope you’re not here to talk about your wedding. No one seems to realize how inappropriate it is to talk about a wedding at a funeral.’

‘No, I’m not,’ Alfonso replied stiffly. ‘Though I do want to say, while we’re on the topic, that I’m glad you changed your mind about going to the wedding.’ It cost him a lot to say that, but Rodrigo had not been very happy with him when he heard that Alfonso had butted heads with Cesare. He thought Alfonso was the reason that Cesare refused to come to the wedding, which was a ridiculous notion. Alfonso was still waiting for the day that Cesare Borgia let himself be influenced by the likes of him. But he would never say that to the father of his bride, of course, so he’d pretended that it _was_ his fault Cesare wouldn’t come, and then he’d promised to reconcile himself with his future brother-in-law.

Cesare pff-ed at Alfonso’s words, not necessarily because he didn’t believe him – he didn’t really care how Alfonso felt – but because it meant that his father must have spoken to Alfonso in the past hour and encouraged him to approach Cesare. It was just like Alfonso _was_ part of the family, the way he was being bossed around by the patriarch with his ridiculous ivory cane.

‘Lucrezia was devastated,’ Alfonso added, thinking that Cesare didn’t believe him.

‘Of course she was,’ Cesare said, but his voice was monotonous rather than arrogant. ‘She plays the old man like a fiddle.’

‘Huh?’ Alfonso said.

‘Come on, my dad wouldn’t be persecuting me about the damn wedding if she hadn’t spent the past weeks pouting her pretty pink lips,’ Cesare said. He found his thoughts lingering on pretty pink lips and quickly downed his drink to drown them out. He put his glass on the bar for a refill and turned to Alfonso, really looking at him for the first time. Alfonso was sitting stiffly on the bar chair, a glass of Lepanto brandy propped up in front of him. ‘And you wouldn’t be here talking to me,’ Cesare noted.

‘Lucrezia never asked me to, just so you know,’ Alfonso replied, thinking that he was only willing to go so far to reconcile with Cesare. He was willing to go pretty far, in truth, but he hadn’t liked Cesare’s remark about her lips any more than Cesare himself had.

‘Oh, I know she didn’t. But papa Borgia did,’ Cesare said, and he turned away from Alfonso to watch the bartender fill up his drink. ‘Or is that apple juice in front of you? I’d recognize that disgusting Spanish brandy anywhere. My father takes every chance he has to smack it into your hands. I swear they make it smell extra bad to complement the assault on your taste buds.’

‘I’m doing him a favour,’ Alfonso said.

Cesare chuckled. ‘Don’t let him hear that. My dad doesn’t deal in favours. He thinks that you’re doing _yourself_ a favour right now, which in a way you are. But never mind that – I suppose there’s some essence to this conversation, yes? A punch line?’

‘Stag night. I’d like to invite you to stag night,’ Alfonso said through clenched teeth.

 _Good gracious God,_ Cesare thought, but he smiled and said: ‘A bachelor’s party! Of course! What’s the recipe? Pub crawl, strip club, snack bar and passing out a mile from your bed?’

Alfonso gave Cesare a cold stare and considered walking away like Cesare had considered it at the grave. But he stayed and said: ‘I don’t know, Dove from work set it up.’

‘Dove from work,’ Cesare repeated. ‘Well, then there’s sure to be strippers, at least. When is the event to be?’

‘Friday.’

He lifted his glass in the air. ‘Can’t wait. Bottoms up,’ he said, and nodded at Alfonso’s full glass of brandy. Alfonso gave Cesare a deadly look, slid the glass further away on the counter and walked off.

Cesare shrugged and emptied his glass.


End file.
